COMMONS MAGAZINE
In the U.S., grassroots groups are campaigning for a commons-based climate solution called “cap-and-dividend”. In this model, carbon is capped where it enters the economy rather than where it is emitted. That’s because there are hundreds of millions of emitters, but only a few thousand ‘first sellers’ of carbon — the big oil, coal and natural gas companies. These companies would be required to buy permits for every ton of carbon they sell. Each year the number of permits would decline, until eventually the flow of carbon through the economy is reduced to a safe level.
The New York Times ran an article summarizing a recent report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the US Department of Commerce; apparently “American private businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter,” the highest dollar amount on record. Earlier this year, the US Census Bureau reported that 2009 saw the income disparity between American citizens at the highest ever on record
All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons is a wake-up call that will inspire you to see the world in a new way. As soon as you realize that some things belong to everyone—water, for instance, or the Internet or human knowledge— you become a commoner, part of a movement that’s reshaping how we will solve the problems facing us in the twenty-first century.
1. The commons and the creation of a commons-based society is a radical yet practical and necessary proposition for our times.
I recently joined a delegation of over 60 international organizations from 30 countries to travel to the Aral Sea, along with my colleague from Food &Water Watch International Policy Director Darcey O’Callaghan.
On the Commons and Council of Canadians hosted a landmark gathering of activists from around the Great lakes in mid-November at the Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks of upstate New York.
Several summers ago, neighbors of all ages, races and income gathered at the intersection of San Francisco’s 25th & Mission Street—right in the street—just to talk. Blocked off from traffic, they sat around café tables, sipped coffee and got to know one another. It wasn’t National Night Out sponsored by the police department, it was a “World Café,” an exercise in community conversation hosted by Marc Tognotti and Kenoli Oleari of the “Neighborhood Assemblies Network“http://sfnan.org/index_nan.php, a project of the Institute of the Commons.
Open Source Ecology (OSE) believes that “everyone in the world should have access to technologies needed to escape poverty and generate natural wealth for themselves and their communities.” The Missouri-based organization has developed open source designs for construction and agricultural machinery that communities around the globe can use to provide for their basic necessities.
The elections this year confirm that our form of democracy reflects a society based on competition, enclosure, and an overall winner-takes-all mentality. In her book, Governing a Commons from a Citizen’s Perspective, Nobel-winner Elinor Ostrom wrote about how governing a common pool of resources requires a different notion of responsibility and citizenship. But we have allowed our political processes to be enclosed by corporate interests, just like the environment and so many other parts of our Commons.
Last week’s violent riots opposing tuition hikes in the UK are a stark reminder of the important role free public education plays in a commons-based society. In the United States, education has long been one of the most widely supported sectors of the commons. By the end of the 19th century, free public education through at least the elementary level was available for nearly all white American children because an educated population was considered essential to maintaining an industrialized nation.
Traveling by plane, in this era of cattle-car comfort and intensive security checks, is rarely an inspiring experience. But flying home from the “International Commons Conference in Berlin”: http://www.onthecommons.org/potato-commons-power-standing I stumbled across a small but promising example of how to reclaim the commons.
November 2010, On the Commons and an inspiring set of leaders from around the Great Lakes, including representatives from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to the Detroit People’s Water Board, Food and Water Watch, the Chiefs of Ontario, Council of Canadians, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Blue Planet Project, FLOW for Water and others, embarked on a shared initiative:
The eyes of the world are on Temacapulin. So declared a banner at an anti-dam rally. Solidarity is probably the single best hope for the 500 residents of this sleepy Mexican town on the brink of being submerged.
It’s a battle of David and Goliath proportions. Father Gabriel, the local priest, tweaked the final words of the Lord’s Prayer, urging, “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from dams. Amen”.
The eyes of the world are on Temacapulin. So declared an anti-dam banner wrapped around a gazebo alongside others naming the Mekong River and the Naradama Valley. Solidarity is probably the single best hope for the 500 residents of this sleepy Mexican town on the brink of being submerged.
It’s a battle of David and Goliath proportions. Father Gabriel, the local priest, tweaked the final words of the Lord’s Prayer, urging, “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from dams. Amen”.
The remarkable success of local commons in safeguarding their environments is well documented.
A detailed study of Japanese common land (iriachi) by Duke University political scientist M.A. McKean was unable to find a single example of a “commons that suffered ecological destruction while it was still a commons.” In Pakistan, the official national report to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development ranked traditionally managed shamilaat communal forests as more effective in environmental protection than forests owned and managed by the state.
The word commons dates back to the medieval era, originally describing land that was shared by a community under well-defined rules. Peasants were often given specific rights to hunt and fish in these places, or to harvest medicinal herbs, forage for berries, or gather thatch for their roofs.
Lots of people rail against the excesses of American consumerism, but no one seems to actually DO anything about it. The Great American Apparel Diet wants to change that. TGAAD, as the website calls itself, is a self-help group of mostly women and a few men who have decided to completely stop buying new clothes for a entire year. The “diet” started on September 1 and continues until August 31, 2011 – although people can join the effort at any time. The diet is now in its second cycle.
Anil Naidoo, a Canadian activist and Fellow with OTC’S Our Water Commons, notes that “People have an affinity for water, an understanding of water, and for generations, for millennia, have been managing their water collectively.”
Our Water Commons seeks to transform society’s decisionmaking about water stewardship in the direction of participatory, democratic, community-centered systems that value equity and sustainability as a strategy.
For anyone who’s seen Inside Job —the powerful documentary exposing how shenanigans on Wall Street triggered the financial crisis that still haunts us today—it’s hard to forget the footage of shameless Harvard and Columbia University professors who made a bundle working on behalf of major banks and never disclosed these lucrative ties in their influential policy recommendations and research reports.